It was the early 1990s, and virtual reality (VR) had arrived. VR gaming systems populated arcades and movie theaters across the country; IBM announced Project Elysium, a “complete integrated VR workstation” for use by architects and builders. At the time, VR seemed poised to be the next big thing in computing. Unfortunately, the complex controls and underwhelming graphics of 90's VR systems prevented virtual reality from living up to its full potential, and the ‘VR revolution’ quickly fizzled out.
Over twenty years later, virtual reality is back in a big way. Soon, consumer VR hardware will be able to display virtual worlds so detailed that they are almost indistinguishable from reality. Yet, for all the progress that has been made in VR, the systems and methods used to enable interaction with these virtual worlds bear a striking resemblance to those of 1991.
For a virtual environment to be truly immersive, manipulation of that environment must be natural and intuitive. Thus, there exists a need in the virtual reality field to create new and useful systems and methods for natural motion interaction with a virtual environment. This invention provides such new and useful systems and methods.